


Astride A Pale Horse (Love Could Be Our Crown)

by VolxdoSioda



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Assassin!Noctis, Crack Played Straight, Gen, based on the Assassin's Festival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 21:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16127153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VolxdoSioda/pseuds/VolxdoSioda
Summary: When Noctis is sixteen, he stumbles across an usual festival.





	Astride A Pale Horse (Love Could Be Our Crown)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seito/gifts).



> Given I haven't played the Assassin's Festival, a lot of this is kind of just guessing, and reading what was available at the time. 
> 
> Also, it's Seito's fault for egging me on.

He doesn't remember how he got there, when he thinks back on it later. Or where  _there_ even was, to be perfectly honest. It felt like something out of a dream, but Noctis had walked into that festival a child, and walked out a killer. He'd made his first kill with the blades equipped beneath the heavy grey and white robes they'd helped him get fitted for, and for an untold amount of time he'd found himself contracted by people into stalking and assassinating people he didn't know. 

It should have frightened him. Should have made him balk. But something in the air felt saccharine sweet, heavy and warm like a blanket. There was no fear in him as he cut a man down, and then ran for his life only to duck around a corner, onto a bunch, bow his head and seemingly vanish even as the Empire's guards ran past. They'd lose interest eventually, and he would go right back to what he was doing.

He still has the robes in the back of his closet, the harness and blades still there. They look clean, in the light, but Noctis can tell where the bloodstains are. Coming back home, he'd been too afraid to ask anyone to help him get the stains out. They'd ask too many questions, go to Clarus or Cor or his dad, and they would ask questions too. 

One year, he thinks to go back there. It's a morbid curiosity and a hatred of the Empire that leads him to taking the Regalia out and trying to find it. But he makes it all the way to Lestallum, and there's no sign of it anywhere. And anyone he asks just looks at him funny. 

He never finds the festival again, or any mention of it. It would almost seem a dream, were it not for the robes, and the blades, and the blood on his hands that nobody else will ever know about.

 

**_0-0-0-0-0-0-0_ **

 

He thinks Ignis and Gladio see it, sometime. The lessons he was taught in the festival. How to maneuver up and over buildings, how to climb, how to run, how to fall. How to spy without being seen, how to creep in corners and lurk without being known. He can stand by his father's side now during meetings, and so long as he's quiet and still and stays in the dark, nobody ever notices him. It's like he's vanished. Like he's not even there. And then he'll take a step forward and gasp  _oh Prince Noctis when did you get here?_

Sometimes, if someone close has died, or he has to attend a funeral of some higher up, he hears a man's voice in his head, hazy, and the feeling of being in warmth and sweetness will return.

 _Requiescat in pace._ Rest in peace. He's never said the words out loud to anyone, but when he speaks them one evening in his bedroom alone, they roll off his tongue like the language is familiar to him. He never says them again, but every time someone dies - especially later - he always hears those words, and feels an urge to repeat them.

But Gladio and Ignis see him sometime, and they watch him almost curiously. They never approach him, but they watch, and Noctis wonders sometime if they think he's been training himself to stalk people like a great predator, if he's secretly been learning how to muffle his footsteps against even the hardest materials. He walks like a cat now - it almost feels wrong not to be silent when he walks. Not to keep himself hidden, and swerve out of sight the moment a guard turns their head.

He doesn't remember the festival, but smells or sensations will bring him back. 

And whenever the Empire shows up at their door, whining about 'peace talks', he finds himself flexing his right hand, pulling fingers up and pushing palm out, as if to shove a blade through someone's neck.

(One day, he will. He will have the blades, and their blood will coat them again, and he will revel in the feeling. Wonder how he ever went without.)

 

**_0-0-0-0-0-0-0_ **

 

When Noctis turns eighteen, his eyes begin to burn. For three days he lies in bed, eyes screwed shut because everything hurts them. Even the smallest of light burns them. His curtains are pulled over his windows, heavy and firm, and he gets around by sensation more often than not, and sound. Ignis is a constant presence, Gladio every now and again, and his father rarely. But he knows them.

The day he opens his eyes, he learns that Drautos is a traitor.

 _The eyes of an eagle see all,_ the same voice that has haunted him forever says while he stares at the man bathed in red.  _Your kingdom is under siege, little chick._

His father and friends are bathed in a soothing blue; only Drautos is in red. Noctis spends a day going out, looking around, but the colors hold. When he focuses, he summons them, and when he blinks and relaxes, all he sees are people. Red for traitors, Noctis thinks, and then thinks of the blades in his closet. Of the robes that cover him so well, and all the ways he can slip away in a palace so large. The way nobody sees him if he stands in the right spots, and doesn't move or speak.

His resolution finds purchase when several Glaives do not return from a mission  Drautos oversees. 

The very next time, Drautos dies, his killer named a ghost; the staff swear they saw a man in a robe come down from the rafters, plunge a knife into Drautos' back, and vanish. 

He comes by twice more - once when Loqi comes to demand Insomnia's loyalty to Niflheim, and the second time when Emperor Aldercapt himself shows up for the body.

Both times, the killer vanishes like a ghost, and for several months after, the Citadel is put under lock-down. Noctis does homeschooling, and is accompanied at all times by guards and his Shield. But the killer does not reappear, and so rumor begins to spread that it must be a Caelum ancestor, come to strike vengeance down on their enemies.

Noctis finds ways to take the blood out of his robes, and gently stows everything back away until next time he's needed.

(On his nineteenth birthday, he dreams of men and women with golden eyes in robes surrounding him; he bows his head, and one comes forward and crowns him.  _Welcome to the Brotherhood, little eagle,_ the man whispers, and he is the voice in Noctis' head, safety and certainty given form. Noctis rises, and his reflection bears golden eyes like them, stalwart and sure. 

His future is certain. He will die, but he will leave a legacy in his wake.)


End file.
